1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to luggage, and more particularly to collapsible expanding luggage.
2. Description of Related Art
Travel has increasingly become a part of modem life. In today's highly interconnected world, many executives travel thousands of miles a year attending to business. Leisure travel has increased as well, and many people now consider vacations and other trips of a scope and duration that would have been unheard of in the past.
Most travelers use luggage to store and protect their possessions while traveling. Many different types of luggage are in use today, including conventional hard-sided and soft-sided suitcases, duffel bags, garment bags, and upright roller travel bags. Of the conventional types of luggage, upright roller travel bags, which are suitcases that have integrated wheels and an integrated rigid, telescoping handle, have become particularly popular because they can be wheeled easily from place to place, are stable and easily controlled while in motion, and have handles that conveniently collapse into the bag.
One problem with conventional luggage is that when it is not in use, it often takes quite a bit of space to store. Even luggage sets, which allow smaller pieces of luggage to be stored inside larger ones, still require enough space to store the largest piece. However, storage space is often at a premium, making luggage storage an inconvenient hassle.
There have been some attempts to create collapsible luggage, so as to minimize the amount of storage space that the luggage consumes. However, the collapsible luggage that has reached the market is largely of the soft-sided sort. The walls of soft-sided luggage generally do not have sufficient rigidity to hold their own shape, which can make loading soft-sided luggage more difficult, and can also adversely affect the ability of soft-sided luggage to protect its contents. Perhaps for these reasons, soft-sided luggage generally does not have the consumer appeal that conventional hard-sided and semi-firm luggage does.
In some cases, reinforcing bars have been added to soft-sided luggage to create some rigidity while preserving the ability of the luggage to collapse. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,443,274 to Klamm discloses a soft-sided bag that includes metal stays in the sidewalls. However, the stays do not reinforce the entirety of the sidewalls, and despite the presence of the stays, the bag is still soft-sided. Moreover, in general, the more rigid the sidewalls of the luggage are, the more difficult it is to make the luggage collapse into a compact form for storage.